Spirits of the Ghan

by Judy Nunn

  ‘Bonjour, Australie,’ he heard them call: he was in France.

  Then the voices of the men on the train calling back ‘Bonjooa, bonjooa!’ – mangled French from raucous Australians. The men were in a cattle wagon, its door opened wide, some seated on the wooden floor legs dangling untidily over the side, others crowded behind eagerly taking in the view and waving to the villagers. They were young men all, and each wore the rank and file uniform of the AIF: tunic, breeches, bandolier, puttees and slouch hat. In wagonload after wagonload, relentlessly one after another, the boys were on their way to the front.

  This dream differed markedly from Matt’s previous dreams, for in this dream he was not an outsider viewing events from above and nor was he an unseen spectator moving among the men. In this dream he was one of them, one of these soldiers, and he was seated at the open doorway, his legs dangling over the side of the wagon as it passed through the village.

  ‘Bienvenue, Australie!’ Two pretty girls, arm in arm out on the footpath, were blowing fervent kisses to the passing troops. ‘Bienvenue! Bienvenue!’ they called.

  The soldier sitting next to Matt blew kisses back; he was a cheeky, freckle-faced young bloke, no more than nineteen. ‘What a couple of crackers,’ he said, nudging Matt in the ribs. ‘Pity we’re not stopping off here, eh, Withers?’ He grinned. ‘Give ’em a wave, cobber, go on, they’re looking right at us.’

  Matt returned his mate’s grin and waved to the girls, who blew kisses back even more fervently. Then the train gathered speed, pulling out of the village and into the meadowlands, leaving the girls two small figures in the distance, still waving and still blowing kisses to the last of the wagons that passed them by.

  When he awoke the next morning, Matt found he couldn’t dismiss this dream with the ease he had the recurring dreams of several weeks back. It stayed with him throughout the day and, once again, although he wasn’t sure why, he felt compelled to share it with Jess. He rang her late in the afternoon.

  ‘I had another “visit”,’ he said wryly, ‘at least I suppose that’s what you’d call it.

  ‘Oh.’ Jess ignored the scepticism. ‘Charlie came back, did he?’

  ‘Nope. Not Charlie, someone entirely different.’

  ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted, ‘in fact I’m pretty much in a state of confusion. Fancy a beer on Saturday? What are you doing late afternoon?’

  ‘Hopefully hearing about your dream,’ she said.

  ‘Goodo. Where’ll we meet?’

  ‘Bojangles in Todd Street, you know it?’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’

  They met at four-thirty for a beer at Bojangles, a colourful bar where the tables were beer barrels strewn with peanuts and where guests were encouraged to throw the shells on the floor. They took up a spot at the front overlooking the street, for the moment it was quiet enough, but come evening when the band arrived things would get noisy.

  ‘So tell me,’ she said when he’d returned from the bar with their drinks, ‘who came to visit you?’

  ‘A soldier from World War I,’ he replied. ‘I think he was me.’

  ‘That’s enigmatic.’

  Jess sipped her beer and listened attentively while Matt told her every detail of the dream, which was still as clear in his mind as it had been three days earlier.

  ‘I was on that train,’ he said. ‘I was one of those soldiers going off to the front and the bloke sitting next to me was a mate of mine. He called me by name, “Withers”, he said. That’s my nickname,’ he added, feeling the need to explain. ‘The men I work with call me Withers, always have, don’t know why.’ He gave a shrug. ‘A bloke-type thing I suppose, men working together seem to adopt nicknames, at least Aussie men do.’

  ‘Did you recognise this mate in the dream? Was he someone you know?’

  ‘Nope. Never seen him before, wouldn’t have a clue who he was, but in the dream I just knew that he was a really close mate.’ Matt shook his head in hopeless surrender. ‘I have no idea what to make of all this. I mean, seriously, what the hell’s going on?’

  ‘You’ve had another “visit”,’ Jess said, ‘that’s what the hell’s going on.’

  ‘Why did I know you’d say that?’ They exchanged a smile and Matt took a hefty swig of his beer, which had so far remained untouched. ‘Your turn, over to you,’ he said, feeling once again strangely unburdened by the recounting of his dream.

  ‘Do you have any relatives who died in World War I, Matt?’ she asked.

  ‘None that I know of.’ He cracked open a few peanuts and chomped away while he waited for her to go on. ‘So what do we do now?’ he asked when she remained silent, and even as he asked he wondered why there should be anything to do.

  ‘We go to my place,’ she said.

  She was already on her feet, so he made no enquiry, just knocked back the rest of his beer and they went outside to his car. Jess had walked to the tavern.

  Back at the flat in Undoolya Road, she dumped her shoulder bag on the sofa and plonked herself down at the desk in the corner.

  ‘My round,’ she said, waving a distracted hand at the living room’s kitchenette area as she focused on her computer, ‘grab yourself a beer and one for me too.’

  Matt obediently did as instructed. ‘Do you want a glass?’ he asked, lifting two cans from the refrigerator. She shook her head and he crossed to the desk, placing the opened beer can beside her.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ her eyes didn’t leave the computer screen, ‘this shouldn’t take long.’

  He looked about the attractive open-plan sitting room. ‘Nice,’ he said, but she didn’t answer, so he walked over to the windows and gazed out at the street. He was pleasantly distracted by the sight of a family in the front garden of the house opposite, a young couple sitting on the verandah steps watching their little boy play with a newly acquired puppy: charming.

  He remained observing the scene for a full ten minutes before her announcement distracted him.

  ‘Brian Francis Witherton.’

  Her voice intruded upon his mindlessness and he turned from the window, from the boy and the puppy and the fond exchanges between parents to Jess, whose eyes were trained on the computer screen.

  ‘Killed in action,’ she said, ‘France, 20 July 1916.’

  He stared wordlessly back at her. What was she talking about?

  ‘Records of service in the Australian Imperial Forces World War I,’ she explained, glancing over to where he stood by the windows. ‘Come and have a look for yourself.’

  He took a chair from the four-seater dining table and joined her to stare at the page she’d called up from the Australian War Memorial site. There it was. Private Brian Francis Witherton, 32nd Australian Infantry Battalion, killed in action, France, 20 July 1916, age at death 20.

  ‘It would appear you’re not the only “Withers”, Matt,’ she said, watching as his eyes scanned the details listed on the screen. ‘You said yourself Aussie workmates adopt nicknames. Well soldiers certainly would. This man in your dream wasn’t you at all.’

  He was about to interrupt, but she continued, urgent, insistent. ‘I know, I know, you felt very strongly you were one of those soldiers, but that was simply a way of getting through to you, of making contact. At least I believe so. The Withers in your dream wasn’t you, Matt: he was family, he was your ancestor.’

  She paused, thoughtful for a second or so, and Matt wondered what to say in response to such a statement, or rather he wondered what to say without causing offence, for she was clearly genuine in her belief.

  ‘Who do you reckon he might be?’ she asked. ‘Your great grandfather perhaps, Charlie’s dad?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t have a clue. My dad never knew his grandfather.’ He wasn’t answering her in all seriousness; How could he? Was he really expected to believe he’d been visited by an ancestor? But he found himself answering her nonetheless. ‘Apart from his mother my dad didn’t have any family.
’

  ‘They’d be the right age, Brian and Charlie,’ she said. ‘Brian could well have fathered a child at twenty. Perhaps his wife didn’t know she was pregnant when he went off to war, just as Charlie’s wife didn’t.’ The more Jess thought about it the more plausible the scenario seemed. ‘Eminently possible I’d say, father and son, two generations of men killed in two world wars: not uncommon, wouldn’t you agree?’

  I have to put a stop to this, he thought, it’s getting out of hand. She was sounding like a detective sleuthing a case; the whole thing was ridiculous.

  ‘Yep,’ he said, ‘not an uncommon occurrence at all, and I agree that quite possibly this Brian Francis Witherton might be my great-grandfather or at least related in some way. It’s an unusual name, so it’s possible. But the whole thing is coincidence, Jess, nothing more than sheer coincidence.’ Given the passion of her belief, and not wishing to be hurtful, he tried to sound reasonable rather than dismissive. ‘I’ve been dreaming about railways because I’m working on the Ghan,’ he said, his tone measured, but emphatic nonetheless. ‘I dreamt about World War II and the Burma Railway because of my grandfather, yes, but I’ve read extensively about World War I and troop rail transport, so it’s not altogether surprising I’d dream about that too. My subconscious mind is obsessed with railways, don’t you see?’ He smiled an apology, hoping she wasn’t offended. ‘Truly, it’s that simple.’

  Jess wasn’t in the least offended. She was fully aware of his scepticism and also of his need to seek a rational answer, but she refused to argue either case, returning his apologetic smile with a disarmingly good-humoured grin.

  ‘Fob me off as much as you like, but I won’t give up. Charlie and Brian have put you in touch with me for a reason and I’m not going to let them down.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said with a laugh. ‘So what’s your plan of attack?’ He’d go along with her simply because she delighted him.

  She knew he was humouring her, but again she didn’t care. Trying to convert a non-believer was a useless exercise that held no interest for her. Discovering the reason for the visitations, however, was of great interest. What was it Matt’s ancestors were trying to communicate? Was it a warning of some kind? Could he or a member of his family be in danger?

  ‘Tell me about your family, Matt,’ she said, ‘any siblings?’

  ‘Nope,’ he replied with a shrug, ‘just my parents and me.’

  But she wasn’t to be fobbed off as easily as that. ‘Uncles, aunts, cousins?’ she queried with dogged determination.

  Recognising her resolve, Matt surrendered himself to the grilling that followed and in answering her endless questions found himself talking as he’d never talked before. He told her about his parents and the loneliness of his boyhood and the influence of his Russian grandmother, surprising himself with his candour.

  Jess was impressed to discover his mother was the artist Lilian Birch, whose outback paintings she so admired, but of greater interest to her was the relationship his parents shared.

  ‘They appear completely at odds,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t believe the difference. Lilian’s flamboyantly eccentric and demanding of attention while Dave’s a loner who stays in the shadows; and yet they’re soul mates, always have been. Their bond from the beginning was a mutual love of the outback, something they obviously passed on to me.’

  ‘But it was your Russian grandmother who brought you up,’ Jess said. ‘Svetlana, right?’

  ‘Oh yes, Babushka.’ He smiled in fond recollection. ‘Babushka was my world as a child, far more of a mother to me than Lilian ever was. But then Lilian wasn’t born to be a mother,’ he added without rancour. ‘Dad and I both accepted the fact, but Svetlana didn’t. There were constant rows between mother and daughter, formidable women.’

  ‘What about the paternal side of your family?’ Jess asked. ‘You said your dad had no-one but his mother?’

  ‘That’s right, Peg. She was a war bride, married Charlie and had a couple of weeks with him, then off he went. Peg brought Dad up on her own; never married again. I didn’t know her. She died in ’64, well before I was born. She was only forty-seven years old, Dad told me, cancer.’

  ‘And what of Peg’s family? What do you know about them?’

  ‘Nothing. There didn’t appear to be any. She was adopted, apparently. Never knew her biological parents and didn’t keep in touch with her adopted ones. A tragic life all round, when you think about it.’

  ‘Yes, it is rather.’ Jess frowned thoughtfully. ‘Not much to go on is there?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Your family tree. It’s pretty sparse.’

  He found her blatant disappointment vaguely amusing. ‘What were you hoping for?’

  ‘I don’t know. A family secret, a skeleton in the closet perhaps, something your ancestors might want to make known to the current generation. Haven’t you ever wondered about your family history?’

  ‘Nope, haven’t given it a thought. I don’t think Dad has either. At least he’s never seemed to. I remember Svetlana being angry that he was unable to provide a family tree: she’d get quite accusatory.’ Matt grinned, recalling his grandmother’s annoyance. ‘“Everyone needs a family history,” she’d say, as if Dad had somehow mislaid his.’

  ‘Everyone has a family history, Matt. It’s just that some don’t know theirs.’ Jess felt on the verge of a breakthrough. ‘Perhaps this is why your ancestors are making themselves known. Perhaps they feel the need to tell you of your past.’

  ‘Perhaps they do,’ he agreed obligingly and then he jumped to his feet. ‘Hey, do you want some dinner? I’m starving.’

  Jess looked at her watch. It was getting dark outside, she realised, the sitting room was becoming gloomy and she hadn’t even noticed. She stood and turned on the overhead lights. ‘Sure. I’ll get us something here if you like.’

  ‘No, no, we’ll go out.’ He’d seen the slightest hesitation and realised a cosy dinner at home might be crossing the line she seemed so determined to avoid and which he too wished to observe. He wondered again at the reasons for her fragility and wanted to tell her not to worry, that he had no intention of making any form of overture. Her friendship was of far greater value to him than a passing sexual dalliance. ‘How about Sean’s Bar?’ he suggested. ‘Do you like Indian food?

  ‘Love it.’

  Sean’s Bar in Bath Street was within easy walking distance and the evening was mild, but at Matt’s suggestion they drove. Again he was wary of putting Jess in an uncomfortable situation by leaving his car at her flat.

  They shared a bottle of wine and a selection of dishes, discovering a shared passion for chilli and very much enjoying each other’s company, and at the end of the evening they halved the bill the way mates did. Then, lingering over coffee, she surprised him.

  ‘I’d like to meet your parents, Matt.’

  During the meal she hadn’t nagged him any further about his visitations; there hadn’t seemed much point. She’d pushed him hard enough already and gained all she could. His parents were a different matter altogether, however, particularly his father, Dave. Perhaps Dave holds the key, she thought, or at least a piece of the puzzle that might offer a hint.

  ‘I sometimes go down to Adelaide for a weekend,’ she said casually, ‘if I did, do you think they’d mind my calling in on them?’

  Much as the suggestion surprised him, he grasped immediately her purpose. ‘You mean do I think they’d mind if you pumped them for information,’ he said drily.

  ‘Yes, that’s pretty much what I mean.’

  ‘I’m quite sure if you told them their son had been visited by his ancestors they’d find the whole thing fascinating,’ he said, ‘in fact I know they would, particularly Lilian. But I don’t think you’d get much joy out of them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’re atheists.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Well, I’ve never asked them outright, but I
very much doubt they believe in an afterlife.’

  ‘Oh you’d be surprised,’ Jess said airily, ‘atheists often have strong spiritual leanings. So you’ll check if they don’t mind my calling in?’

  ‘Of course I will. I’ll ring them tomorrow.’ He had to admire her tenacity.

  They finished their coffee and said their farewells, Jess walking back towards the footbridge rugged up against the chill evening air and Matt driving off to the Heavitree Gap Hotel where he spent a night blissfully free of dreams.

  He rang her the following day, late in the afternoon.

  ‘Just been speaking to Lilian,’ he said, ‘I told her the whole story and she can’t wait to meet you.’

  ‘Fantastic, I’ll go down to Adelaide next weekend.’ Jess was thrilled. ‘I’ll book the hotel right away.’

  ‘No hotel, you’ll be staying at the house, Mum insists.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said quite adamantly, ‘I couldn’t possibly do that.’

  ‘Yes you could. I’m coming with you. I’ve owed them a visit for some time now and Mum’s over the moon at the prospect. Let’s make it the Saturday after next: I get a long weekend every second month and I’m due one then. I presume you can take the Monday off? You’re pretty much your own boss, aren’t you?’

  She was being railroaded. ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Great. We’ll fly down together on the Saturday and come back on the Monday, more relaxing than just an overnight trip.’

  ‘Um …’ There was a pause while she wondered what to say. This put an altogether different perspective on things.

  ‘Give us a break, Jess, you didn’t honestly think I’d let you grill my parents without my being there,’ he said jokingly, knowing full well the cause for her hesitation.

  ‘No, I suppose not. I mean I suppose I didn’t really think things through properly –’

  ‘You didn’t need to,’ he interrupted briskly, ‘there was never anything to think through. I’ve wised Mum up, she’s under no misconception, she knows we’re just mates. You’ll be in the upstairs guest bedroom and I’ll be in the flat out the back as I always am – we won’t even be under the same roof at night!’